


Day 0

by miss_nettles_wife



Series: Eerie Next Gen [1]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Texting, next gen fic, thinley veiled hocus pocus references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 00:38:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18063242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Marshall and Janet's troubled daughter is sent to live with her paternal grandparents in Eerie, Indiana.





	Day 0

**Author's Note:**

> gotta admit; wasn't sure I was gonna post this. But i doubt anyone is game to complain about more eerie fic. unless you are, in which case feel free too.

When Ines got rich and famous one day, the first thing she was going to do was buy her mother a bigger car.

The little two-seater probably carried her and John around town just fine, but any more than that was too much for the little thing to carry. At the moment, it only contained her, her mother and her two suitcases and that was too much. She felt like they were going down the highway too slowly.

Or maybe it just felt too slowly because her mother was furious and Ines would have preferred to be anywhere but right where she was. She could practically feel the anger coming off her in long rolls in the air, and she did not much like what she felt.

“What am I going to do with you, Ines?”

“Uh.”

“What were you thinking, uploading a virus to the school computer systems?”

“I already told you; we were trying to vanquish-”

“I know what you told me,” she confirmed, her knuckles tight on the wheel. “I just don’t believe it.”

“Well, then I don’t know what to tell you.”  She said, taking a stand of her fringe and wrapping it around her finger. In her pocket, her phone cherry colored phone buzzed twice. It was probably Delaney confirming that she was also expelled from their very fancy and very expensive private school that was still standing because of their actions. Not that anyone seemed to care that they’d vanquished an ancient evil.

Whatever, their loss.

“Don’t answer that.”  Her mother said, sternly when she saw Ines’s finger edging towards the pocket of her green military coat. “We’re talking.”

Ines wants to tell her that no, they’re not. She is. But she doesn’t. It doesn’t seem like it will be helpful to her current situation. She turned her head to look at her. She looked older than the last time she saw her at the beginning of last year. She hadn’t seen her over the Christmas break, she’d spent it in New York with Delaney and her family.

She was kind of heartbroken to know that Delaney was going back to the other side of the country and she was stuck here with her mother in Salem. Not just her mother either. Her mother...And John. Her stepfather. Now, to be fair she had been at a fancy school in Holland when he proposed to her; but if she had been here she would have tried to knock his lights out.

Ines wasn’t one to be hateful, but she hated him. He was too strict and too loud and too rude and the last time she saw him he threw out her collection of Cryptozoology Weekly that had her fathers articles in them because they got water damaged at the school she’d been kicked from in California. She’d been so mad that until he got sent to her most recent school, she’d stayed with her grandparents, who had also moved to Salem to live near to their eldest daughter.

“You were doing so well, Ines.” Janet despaired, “Three years at the same school. I thought this time, you’d found the one.”

“So did I.”

She had loved Sacred Heart of Saint Michael School for Troubled Youth. She’d been trying to protect it.

Her phone buzzed again, and again after that.

“You can use that phone to text John and tell him you’re sorry for wasting his money.”

She opened her phone and saw she had fifteen texts from Delaney, and two miss called. She opened up Johns contact page and types out a generic apology text identical to the ones she’d sent him before. His most recent message to her was asking what she thought her mother might like for her birthday.

She then opened Delaney's texts.

_ ‘U okay? Your mom seemed pissed.’ _

_ ‘I told my dad that we were trying to stop other girls nudes from being exposed and he calmed down. Have you told her that yet?’ _

_ ‘Nes text me back’ _

_ ‘My dad says you can come to New York to stay with us if you want. We can go to my old school together.’ _

_ ‘How am I gonna be away from you Nes?’ _

_ ‘My dad will talk to your mom if you want.’ _

_ ‘Im gonna call you.’ _

_ ‘Hes gonna sue the school for expelling us without giving their three strikes policy.’ _

_ ‘Im gonna call again.’ _

_ ‘Maybe your mom has your phone? Mrs Manley, Ines didn’t do anything wrong at school, she was just trying to help. I’m the one who made the virus and told her to release it. Please don’t be too mad with her. My dad is happy to call you and talk in our defense.’ _

_ ‘Text me when you can’ _

_ ‘I miss you already.’ _

She opened up her keyboard and began to text back, finally.

_ ‘She’s really mad but she wont be forever. She hasn’t taken my phone yet, but she might when we get back to Salem. Going to school with you in NY would be awesome, I’ll try and talk to her when she calms down. ❤ u.’ _

She put the phone back in her pocket and looked at her mother’s profile. Mrs. Manley. She’d never be that. John had tried to convince her to let him adopt her not too long ago. Ines Simone Manley. As if. She was a Teller, that much she knew. And letting him adopt her, that was like saying that her father was never coming back. It was an admission of failure.

How was she going to survive living in the same house as John?

When they got back to Salem she was going ask her grandmother to send her old man’s weirdness investigating resources over so she can speed up the process of finding out what the Hell he was and how he managed to possess her mother.

She had some ideas, but being away at boarding school she hadn’t had a lot of time to work out the kinks.

When she’d been younger, her mother had been much more present and cared a lot more about her. She looked forward to coming home for the holidays rather than trying to avoid it. There was an unspoken agreement that if Ines wanted to go to a normal school in Salem then she could. Until John came along. According to some of the notes she had swiped before John went through the attic and began systematically removing every trace of her father from their lives, her father had once investigated a doppelganger in Salem and he considered the place a hotbed of ‘weirdness’ but nothing dangerous.

He had no idea.

They passed a roadsign.

“Mom we just passed our turn off.” She said as they continued to speed away, the turnoff to Salem shrinking in the window.

“No, we didn’t.”

“I thought we were going home?”

“I’m going home. You’re not.”

“What? Where are we going?”

“The airport.”

“You’ve found a school already?” That was fast, she hadn’t even had time to pitch her idea of going to live with Delaney, after all. It wasn’t as if her mother and John wanted her around was it? She’d been hanging around with Delaney since Holland, and she didn’t want to be separated from her now.

“No. Well, yes. Since you’re clearly not thriving under their care and I know that you don’t want to be at home with John, you’re going to go to BYF Skinner High.”

“Where’s that?” She asked, fingers twitching towards her phone.

“Eerie, Indiana.”

“...What?”  Eerie? Her hometown? The one that her mother had sworn never to return to after her father vanished under mysterious circumstances? The one she’d run away from when she was thirteen? That Eerie Indiana?

“I spoke to your grandmother on the phone and she’s happy to have you on the condition that you help her run the Instagram for her store.”

Ines had no idea what to say. The world whizzed past them on the sides. She didn’t really want to go to Eerie Indiana. She didn’t know Eerie Indiana. She hadn’t been there since she was a little girl and she didn’t know how it might have changed from the way she remembered it. More than that, she didn’t want to be somewhere where the traces of her father were so overwhelming.

At the house, there were two photos of him, the only ones that John would not take down. One of him holding baby Ines on his mother's sofa. Ines is holding onto a strand of his hair in her chubby baby fists and he is smiling down at her. He looks very young. If you didn’t know she was his daughter you might think she was his sister. The other is of her first birthday, and she is sitting on his lap wearing an oversized Loch Ness Monster hat. The same one she wore most of the time she was outdoors and out of her uniform. It’s far too big for her baby head and Marshall has one hand on the back to keep it on.

All the others are either long gone or in boxes.

Having spent more years away from him than with him the idea of suddenly being submerged in his world was scary.

“My things…”

“Are all in the trunk, if you need anything else you can buy it or I can send it to you.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?”

“No, not after you uploaded a virus to hundreds of girls private computers you don’t, no.”

After a long moment of watching the road, and seeing the pale white figure of a naked being in the overhead street lights, but he’s gone by the time she blinks. She turned to her mother and took a breath.

“Are you coming too?”

“No, but your grandmother will meet you at the airport.”

“Okay.” She said, finally, unable to work up the guts to ask her why she doesn’t want her only child around.

“Okay,” Janet repeated.

…

There is no airport in Eerie, and that’s probably a good thing.

So she was forced to land in a small, run down national only airport that was two towns away from where she wanted to be. It was the best there was. At the airport, she’d said goodbye to her mother, promised to call daily and then texted with Delaney after she got through security.

For the minute, they were stumped about how to reunite but she figured that they’d find a way. They had before.

Suitcase in hand, she exited the terminal and entered the arrival lounge. Before she even has time to look for them, her extended family is already calling her by name. Loudly. Excitedly. She found them easily in the crowd and confirmed it was for her when she saw the giant sign painted in cheerful pink: ‘WELCOME HOME NESSIE’

Holding the sign was a woman she recognized from pictures, her Godmother (her mother had not wanted her to have a godmother but her father had insisted) Melaine Monroe. She was wearing a little corn pin on her blazer and the one holding the sign. Next to her was a short man with grey hair wearing a baby carrier (complete with baby) over a black trench coat. Uncle Dash. Near to him was a kid with grey hair wearing a Star Wars top. David, her cousin and family freakazoid. Behind them were her grandparents. G-Dad was wearing a casual suit with glasses. Nan was wearing a faded ‘have you seen this man’ shirt with a picture of her dad on it.

G-Dad took her bags from her and lifted them onto a trolley while she greeted everyone individually. Missing, she noted, was Aunty Cynthia. But that wasn’t unusual. She was usually busy doing journalist stuff, had been for as long as Ines has known her.

As they walked to the car, David spoke non-stop.

“You won’t believe what I found out, Uncle Simon was visiting last week for dinner, and when he started talking I swear I-”

“David Teller, what have I told you about speaking badly of the mayor?” Nan said as they paid for their parking. Damn, the mayor. She was named after the man and Ines hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t here. It probably wasn’t a big deal, she imagined he had mayor stuff to do.

“Sorry, Nan. Ines, when we get back I have to show you the cast that I made from bigfoots footprint. You won’t believe how many toes he has!”

She looked to uncle Dash for help but he returned it with a look that told her in no uncertain terms that this was her problem. They split up into different cars. Melaine took Dash in her red convertible. G-Dad took her, Nan and David who was (somehow) still talking, though now he’d swapped over to the monster of Eerie Lake.

She did not see much peace in the near future.

-

Del-

Eerie Indiana: Day 0.

The start.

Yours always,

Ines


End file.
